ABSTRACT The circular economy—wherein waste is designed out, materials are circulated and nature is regenerated—has reached global recognition. From policy to business circles, it is seen as a viable strategy to address multiple societal grand challenges—including climate change and depletion of finite natural resources—and build a more resilient, competitive and resource‐efficient economy. The circular economy has also evolved into an established research field, and circular business models have become a key focus of academic enquiry. Yet, their implementation within the corporate context is slow. Hence, this article proposes a research agenda for circular business models scholars that advances the academic literature whilst being relevant for practice. Drawing from the strategic management field, our research agenda seeks to enlighten the relationship between circular business models, competitive advantage, and value creation as well as the multifaceted implications of managing and organizing in a circular context.
ABSTRACT This study examines whether concentrated voting control increases corporate tax avoidance in French listed firms and whether board gender diversity and audit committee independence constrain that relationship. Using 3388 firm‐year observations from 242 CAC All Shares firms from 2009 to 2022, the analysis combines hand‐collected voting rights concentration with three tax‐avoidance measures. Effective tax rate measures are transformed so that higher values consistently indicate higher avoidance, and book tax differences are used to capture reporting gaps between accounting and taxable income. The main estimations use generalized least squares with year and industry fixed effects, firm‐clustered robust standard errors, and system generalized method of moments checks for endogeneity. The results support an entrenchment view. Higher ownership concentration is associated with greater tax avoidance across the effective tax rate and book tax difference measures. Board gender diversity weakens this positive association, especially where female representation moves from very low to moderate levels. Audit committee independence also dampens the concentration avoidance link, while the COVID‐19 year strengthens it. The study contributes to governance and tax avoidance research by showing how voting control, board composition, and crisis conditions jointly shape tax risk in a civil law setting.
ABSTRACT This study builds a behavioral bridge between Upper Echelons Theory and Ansoff's Strategic Success Hypothesis by examining whether CEO technical orientation and power concentration help explain why firms facing similar turbulence achieve different levels of strategic posture and, in turn, different performance outcomes. SSH explains why performance depends on fit among environmental turbulence, strategic aggressiveness, and capability responsiveness, yet it is less explicit about why comparable firms reach different strategic positions, while UET explains executive influence but often leaves the posture pathway to performance underspecified. Using a matched firm‐year panel of Nasdaq firms that combines strategic‐posture measures, hand‐coded CEO attributes, and performance outcomes, the study tests whether CEO technical orientation and power concentration are associated with strategic posture and whether strategic posture mediates their associations with operating and expectation‐based performance. The findings show that stronger strategic posture is positively associated with both outcomes, that the two executive attributes help explain which firms achieve stronger posture, and that bootstrap indirect effects support statistical mediation through X1, while the posture–performance gap is more informative about uneven conversion of alignment into cash‐flow performance than about a stable independent performance penalty.
ABSTRACT Within environmental sustainability, firms have varying green choices: initiative, passivity, and adaptability. Green strategic deviation (GSD) refers to firms' actions diverging from industry conventions regarding environmental protection. We classify GSD into three categories: positive‐high, negative‐high, and others (positive‐low and negative‐low), which correspond to green initiative, passivity, and adaptability, respectively. This study investigates how GSD impacts risk‐taking (RT), using the sample of A‐share listed firms in China from 2010 to 2024. We find that positive‐high GSD reduces RT, reflecting initiative/reformism as risk absorbers; negative‐high GSD also decreases RT, indicating passivity/immobilism as risk dampers; whereas other GSDs (positive‐low and negative‐low) intensify RT, implying that adaptivity/centrism may involve risks. Notably, these relationships are stronger under environmental tax policy. Furthermore, national institutional embedding (NIE) acts as a boundary condition, contingent upon dominant political privileges and rigorous institutional oversight. Theoretically, it expands strategic deviation to green engagement (from synthesized to single dimensions), and fully considers deviation directionality (positive vs. negative) and hierarchy (high vs. low) rather than solely absolute value. In green practices, firms should remain vigilant against the pitfalls of moderate centrism; sustainable progress necessitates government mechanisms that drive firms forward and alleviate intermediate challenges through increased resource incentives and compliance scrutiny.
Financing choices often look routine-until a shock turns them into a strategic pivot. This paper examines how Eurozone SMEs reconfigure their financing mix when bank credit tightens, focusing on the Russia-Ukraine war as a destabilizing episode that accelerates strategic change in resource mobilization. The analysis uses firm-level SAFE survey data from 16 Eurozone countries (January 2009-June 2024; 28,397 observations) and estimates random-effects panel probit models with lagged credit-rationing measures, a war-period indicator, and interaction terms to identify war-specific shifts in financing behavior. Credit-rationed SMEs show a clear propensity to move away from traditional bank funding and toward alternative channels, and the war period intensifies this reconfiguration for constrained firms. Trade credit continues to act as a working-capital buffer, and informal loans become a fast, relationship-based liquidity backstop. Market-based financing, in contrast, weakens sharply during the war period, consistent with heightened risk aversion and reduced liquidity. Grant access does not rise in a systematic way for constrained SMEs, raising questions about targeting during crises. These findings position financing reconfiguration as an observable form of strategic change under geopolitical uncertainty and offer actionable implications for SME leaders, lenders, suppliers, and policymakers designing crisis-time support.
